Voluntarism A Way to Ask
Candidates to Display Abilities

This guest editorial was published in the Raleigh,
N.C. News and Observer on May 27, 1986.

Toward the end of
our recent primary campaign, I found in my mail an envelope from Common Cause
stuffed full of petitions urging campaign reform. After having read ad after ad
in which candidates ran on the backs of their wives and children, churches,
business and professional associations, but never on an issue of substance, I
smirked as I trashed the envelope.

No doubt, campaign
reform is a desperate necessity. But the big lobbies are stomping around so
heavily in the muck of campaign financing that their eyes are too roiled for
them to see the real problem.

Campaign financing
can only be reformed by politicians, yet they know more desperately than most of
us how important campaign financing has become. They need it; they depend upon
it—they cannot reform what they have become so needy of and dependent upon.
Then, too, there are the constitutional issues involved in attempts at such
reform that may be insurmountable without endangering our other liberties as
well.

But has anyone
seriously asked why campaign financing has grown so important? Could it be that
such vast amounts of money are necessary because too many candidates have
nothing substantial to run on and therefore can only attempt to outdo one
another in inundating us with irrelevant nonsense that provides them with their
one hope of success-name—recognition? If so, the problem the reformers are
concerned with perhaps can he solved without the help of politicians.

The United States
has a great tradition of voluntarism. Why can't we put this tradition to work
once more?

Why can't some
non-partisan institution, such as the Educational Testing Service in Princeton,
N.J., prepare every other year a series of examinations that test at least the
following knowledge: 1) complicated critical reasoning; 2) the philosophical
foundations of our and other political and economic systems; and 3) the
historical bases or the pressing social problems of the moment?

Why can't we then
induce another non-partisan group, such as the League of Women Voters, to
administer these examinations and encourage candidates from the lowest to the
highest offices to take them voluntarily with the provision that if they do,
they agree to publish the results in all of their campaign literature, even if
that literature merely pictures their families?

Of course, this
effort still might not result in any serious debates of the issues, but the
public would at least know which candidates knew something about them and which
had the ability to critically evaluate the pressures put on officeholders by the
special interest lobbies. Such a simple voluntary effort also might discourage
office seekers motivated more by ambition than ability and encourage others with
more ability to seek office.

The
realization of this idea requires no legislation and little expense and poses no
threat—except that of comparison —to those who are afraid to reform the current
system. And if any office seeker should ask why he should be expected to
demonstrate some ability in advance of his election, we can ask him why
legislators require so many other professions to demonstrate
theirs.